In typical healthcare settings, the care team for a particular patient is dynamic, i.e., clinicians frequently join and leave the team and responsibility for the patient may shift among team members depending on, e.g., their availability and the evolving needs of the patient. For instance, in addition to a primary physician and/or one or more nurses who are involved in the care of the patient for an extended period of time, the team may include a number of specialists (e.g., a cardiologist, anesthesiologist, etc.) who have only one or few interactions with the patient. As another example, a patient-intake team or emergency-room personnel may initially capture important patient information and/or provide urgent care, but later hand the patient off to another group of clinicians and cease involvement with the patient. The clinicians who are actively involved in the patient's care at a particular time and/or who should be kept abreast of the patient's condition can be difficult to track, compromising the ability of a team member to identify the individuals who should receive certain patient-related communications.
The difficulty of tracking team members responsible, at a given time, for a particular patient carries administrative as well as clinical implications. Healthcare regulations mandate that “protected health information” (PHI) be accessible only by caregivers authorized to access the information. Proper user authentication is required to access and alter PHI; this not only ensures patient privacy and safety, but also permits changes made to patient records to be audited later.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and techniques for tracking a patient's care team over time, and for assessing, at any given time, a given clinician's degree of involvement with the patient.